Broccoli is very hard on the stomach -- it's not a veggie I would suggest eating daily at the beginning of primal.

When I started out I had a short time of being constipated but it was due to stress and not drinking enough water. When your body's cleaning house with good food, you need to be hydrated.

That's not to say drink water until you become sick! Just have a bottle with you around the house and work.

One last thing - from experience I know I have heart palpitations and weakness if I go too low-carb. The 100-200g carb range is fine for me. Mark didn't state any absolutes, just gave us guidelines to see if they fit our unique needs.

I'm sure this is great, but I just can't listen to anything with Jimmy Moore on it. The guy just pushes my buttons for some reason.

Except he's just kind of acting as a moderator. He's not asking the questions, nor is he providing the answers. Diane Sanfilippo is doing most of the advice dishing. And she's spent a good portion of her career studying digestion.

Oh and she talks about the whole Matt Stone thing with digestion as well, relevant with the other thread going around.

You keep referring to going back to eating "normal". What exactly is that? I would like to know when you went VLC, how much of a change in your diet was it? There are plenty of people here that are healthy enough to do just about anything they want with their diets and still feel good. You are obviously not in that category. If it's weight loss you're after, then not eating too many carbs is probably a smart thing but the biggest component of weight loss is definitely calories.

I'm a believer that our bodies do not like big rapid changes. Some people can tolerate large swings but most can't. Not that I would recommend another shot at VLC, but if you were to try it again you could slowly move in that direction over a few months.

I've just read this whole thread (it's been a very long time since I've read an entire thread on this forum) and I think the big issue is the title, as others have already mentioned. It's never a good idea to go blasting into a community, speaking negatively about a leader or principle, especially with information missing.

So the issues, to me, are:
1) Sensationalist title
2) Lack of self responsibility
3) Lack of information

Now with the self responsibility thing, I can see from your further info post why you kept going even though it wasn't working. I've done the same thing too, for example when trying to eat more coconut products. First I tried to make a stirfry with coconut milk, and I had terrible stomach pain and unfortunate toilet consequences. But I thought maybe it was the mushrooms or something else, so I'll try again. I made a recipe with coconut flour and shredded coconut - I got a rash on my face (which I've never had before). At this point I obviously had suspicions but I bought coconut milk again, to try one more time. When I opened it, the smell literally made me want to be sick (It hadn't the first time I smelt it). I took this as a definite sign that my body really did not like coconut and I threw it away.

Mark, and many members of this forum, love coconut products. Mark always advocates coconut products. I'm sure I can find a statement where he would claim humans would survive if they cooked with coconut in every meal.

BUT. I don't blame Mark for that. It's simply my body. There are always outliers. There are always exceptions. Do you know how tedious it would be to write any kind of nutritional article if you listed every single possible exception? Because there are legitimately endless possibilities for how people could react to anything anyone who writes about nutrition could say.

The problem is how you've come into this way of eating, or the way you've approached nutritional research in general, or even the way you interpret advice in general. Most people have a built-in awareness factor that tells them "this is general advice and there could be exceptions". Mark doesn't need to state that every time. So I know you have a problem with his advice being dangerous but realise that 99% of us read the same thing you did and did not interpret it how you did. You decided you wanted to try zero carb through other research/thoughts. Then when you read Marks statement that we have no requirement for carbs, that fit the thoughts you had already created about going zero carb.

No one is responsible for your health but you.

I can see you have had big problems and wanted to warn people, and that's absolutely fair enough. But there is nothing wrong with Marks general advice about carbs. You're clinging to a reason to justify your actions that lead to this negative outcome. Telling us we could survive without them is just to get across the point that they don't need to be as massive a part of our diet as they currently are (for most people).

If this experience has told you that zero carb, or even low carb, isn't right for you, then that's absolutely fine. There are plenty of others who will agree with you. You've conducted some n=1 research and found what doesn't work for you. But again, that's not Marks fault, and it's not because of his statement.

I hope you find a way of eating soon that can lead you to the health outcomes you desire